Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is Going To Be Amazing

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Quick, the RPS hivemind has retired to a snoozing chamber in London to absorb more knowledge into the glorious whole, so let’s have a party. It’ll be full of blood and guts and dead animals and religious subtexts! Not your sort of party? You probably haven’t played enough Binding of Isaac, the gory 2D roguelike from way back in the mists of time, 2011. It was one of the first in the long line of every-run-is-different action games from the past few years and (particularly with the DLC) is fuckingbrilliant. Since we last heard from dev Mr. Edmund McMillen, he’s been hard at work on a remake/expansion and putting updates on the game’s blog. The main purpose is to get away from its Flash trappings so it will run acceptably on a larger number of machines, plus allow some console ports. However, there’s also been music, item and enemy reveals, the best of which I’ve hunted down, cried at until they died and hung the corpses of on the wall below.

First, bung this on repeat:

New jam discovered, along with twoothers remixed from the original game into glorious new forms.

Alright, now you’re ready for some sweet killer-baby action. In case you’re here without any prior knowledge, the titular Isaac is able to pick up various power-ups as he progresses through his mom’s basement and destroys the horrific creatures that lurk there. These upgrade his tears to be more fearsome projectiles, cause his little legs to waddle faster or make him harder to kill. Or it might be something totally different that switches up how the game plays significantly. An example: it’s possible to have a positive fleet of floating fetuses destroying all who stand in your way.

There’s some work-in-progress looking stuff here, like the slightly out of place UI elements, but it does a good job showing off the sort of ridiculous situation the game can evolve into. Nice new art on the floors and ally sprites too – Ed said in his Q&A that he half-assed it originally and he wanted the game’s Zelda roots to shine through a bit more, but I think it just looks better now.

What about the enemy department? Ed’s being cagey, stating he hates showing off his games when they’re a WIP, but one he’s been willing to let slip is the Nest. It’s similar to the fly vomiting Hives from the original game, only focused on spiders. With the caveat that many of the visual effects are still to be implemented, you can have a look at the sprite below.

There’s a much softer edge to everything here, and it should look proper gorgeous now the game can be high-resolution’d properly. Gorgeous and horrifying: while no details on the promised new bosses or chapters have been announced, I’m willing to put my neck out and assume a couple of nightmares is an inevitability after first experiencing them. The original final boss, a hairy, wart covered leg, still makes me shiver a little.

The coup de grâce is a variety of announced new weapon enhancements. My favourite is the Tiny Planet, which makes your shots do this:

Which, combined with the best upgrade from the original game, Ipecac, looks like this:

Which might look ridiculous and impractical but it’s actually ridiculous, impractical, awesome and powerful. Isaac’s greatest strength, in my estimation, was the endless chase of a truly ridiculous set of abilities. There was never quite enough depth in its enemies or layouts to make every room a new challenge after ten hours or so, but each run would be radically separate from previous. Ed’s stated he’s going to leave in as many of the overpowered combinations of rare items as he can without thoroughly breaking the game. This is superb, letting the modular nature of the combat engine design its more awesome moments. It also means you can look forward to things like this:

There’s loooooads more details chilling out over on the devblog and I highly recommend checking it out to see chain-puke, laser-swirls and bullet-halos.

They teased a potential 3ds build recently with some screenshots you could scan into the 3ds via QR code that had 3ds formatted images like those above including full 3-d… nothing guaranteed but I think it’s more likely than you are believe.

HOLY CHRIST! I’ve 100%’d Both BoI and WotL and I’m ready to 100% Rebirth. Why the hell can’t this be on Early Access? I’d pay $20 for this shit, easy. Addiction can be a beautiful thing when playing this macabre game.

“It was one of the first in the long line of every-run-is-different action games from the past few years and (particularly with the DLC) is fucking brilliant.”

Can’t say I agree with this, I poured over 70 hours into it; but barely any of that is post-DLC, which I found made the game too long and arsed up the balance too much.

Then again maybe that’s just my natural limit of how long I’ll play a game, as it’s pretty much the same amount of time I poured into FTL and while I’ve given it a couple of plays since the advanced edition comes out I haven’t fallen into the same compulsive playing that I did first time around.

So yeah, don’t know whether I’ll bother with this or not but I probably will, it’s been a long time since I’ve played it and it is most definitely “fucking brilliant.”

You, sir, have no respect for the game in question. Binding of Isaac is one of the few games that does deserve to be described as amazing. It is an awesome thing of obscene beauty – compelling in it’s premise, confusing in it’s resolution, or lack of resolution, disturbing in it’s implications.

But hark! Do I speak in a manner altogether over-modern? Methinks You are a man who dost preserve the older meanings of words. Allow me to elucidate in a manner you may find altogether more sensible.

Binding of Isaac is a game to be feared by all game-fearing men. You may trust my opinion, I have known this game. Not merely some version of tiddlywinks, the implications of the premise put forth by this game extend far beyond the facile explosions and murders of your modern diversions. Unique in presentation, bold in execution, varied in ornamentation, this game was designed to enthrall and enthrall it does.

Verily I may verify. Never hast a game so deserved to be so described.

Ah, The Binding of Isaac. Never have I spent so much time playing a game whose aesthetics I so absolutely hated.

The pixel style does look a lot better than the original weirdly smooth flash-y version, especially in motion, but I still can’t stand the visual design. That said, I am certainly looking forward to actually playing the new content (probably for far far too many hours).

Personally, I think it looked better before. Everything looks so… cartoony, now. Not that there’s anything wrong with cartoony. I just liked the creepier atmosphere the original had. Those big outlines around sprites seem awfully silly for this game’s atmosphere as well, and the doors look really out of place, especially with the way the sprites jiggle cartoonishly when they open and close. Maybe I’ll change my mind when I play it.

OH GOOD I WAS WONDERING WHEN I COULD CRY THINGS TO DEATH IN A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT FASHION
GOD MODERN GAMES ARE ALL THE SAME SHIT. CHOP MORE ONIONS CRY FURTHER CRY HARDER CRY FASTER
BACK IN MY DAYS WE HAD FULLY SIMULATED BOOGER PHYSICS

” It’ll be full of blood and guts and dead animals and religious subtexts!”

So it’s like the God Of War II launch party? Also, that last picture creeps me out. I once had a horde of tiny spiders crawling across my roof … That night I went a little crazy and none survived the slaughter.

I still remain completely mystified that BoI is so popular and highly praised. To me it seemed like a crappy Newgrounds flash game with a “lol gross stuff” style that was a poor man’s riff on Jhonen Vasquez.

Then again I paid all of about £1.50 for the game and its expansion, which I maintain was about £5 too much.